WND's foreign relations

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News Service.. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market dailies.

I have received many honors since launching WorldNetDaily more than five years ago.

I have also received many awards and accolades in my 20-year newspaper career before starting WND.

But, last week, I received what I consider to be my highest honor yet.

It came when I happened upon a story in China’s People’s Daily, Tuesday, July 16. The story from the official news agency of the Beijing government charged the Western news media have been painting “a sinister picture of China,” emphasizing its threat to peace.

Chief among the screed’s complaints was a story appearing three days earlier in WorldNetDaily.

“July 13 saw U.S. most famous ‘WorldNetDaily’ released (sic) its red banner headline coverage: ‘China’s Object’: Sink U.S. Aircraft Carriers,” the story said. “Meanwhile it saw to it that a questionnaire be put out to make a further fuss about ‘China threat’ in the way 92 percent of the responds (sic) online regards China as a threat to the U.S. ‘WorldNetDaily’ as ‘Washington Post’ has all along been known for their ‘rightist,’ ‘conservative’ and ‘anti-China’ stand. So for their anti-China stand the two are by no means isolated or just few for they find AP and Reuter, Washington Times, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, USA Today also in their company having much ado about the theory of ‘China threat.’”

I know it doesn’t read like poetry, but it was music to my ears.

Yes, WorldNetDaily, an upstart, independent online news source dwarfed in budget and resources by all the other press institutions cited by the report, is making an impact – an impact even felt across the globe.

The totalitarian government of China, ruling over 1.2 billion subjects, considers WorldNetDaily its most severe – and effective – critic in the western media. For that I am proud.

I have to believe the Chinese media are a little confused, however, about the Washington Post. I assume they are confusing the Washington Post and the Washington Times. The Post writes love letters to Beijing. The Times, too, has been critical in its reporting of human-rights abuses and the increasing threat posed by China’s military.

Interestingly and ironically, while China was attacking WorldNetDaily by name, I was involved in discussions with my counterpart at Pravda Online – one of the journalistic stepchildren of the former official house organ of the Soviet state.

The result of those discussions is a new exclusive content-sharing partnership allowing WorldNetDaily readers access to original reporting by Pravda and permitting Pravda to translate WorldNetDaily’s reporting into Russian for its readers. Pravda is the largest Russian-language online news service in the world.

Pravda has already begun translating and republishing WorldNetDaily’s content in Russian. WorldNetDaily readers will begin seeing Pravda reports – in some cases rewritten in our own U.S. journalistic style – this week.

Yes, the times they are a-changin’.

I’m usually cynical about talk of a “global village,” but the Internet really is bringing us closer together in some positive ways. It is spreading the good news of freedom around the world. If WorldNetDaily is, indeed, famous in China, it’s because of our uncompromising reporting and the independent and free voices we carry as commentators. Imagine what a voice like this must mean to people in China.

While 95 percent of WorldNetDaily’s millions of readers live in the United States, it is read every day in more than 180 other countries in the world – including China. Who could have imagined such impact just 10 years ago?

Yes, I hope WorldNetDaily is famous in China. I wouldn’t even mind if WorldNetDaily is “infamous” among the ruling elite in Beijing. And I hope what we do here becomes an increasing threat to totalitarian rule in China.

Chairman Mao once proclaimed it was time for “a thousand flowers to bloom.” He never really meant it. He wanted a closed society and a brutal command-and-control centralized bureaucracy beholden to him and only him.

But the Internet is really planting those flowers. There will be even more than 1,000 some day. Because of what we do and what the Internet does, it is becoming impossible for a closed society to keep out the truth, to block out the good news of freedom, to pretend that liberty under God does not really exist.